“Video games aren’t real life,” says WMU student

April 12, 2016

By SARAH CULTON

Gabe Green

“Video games don’t make people violent,” Western Michigan University student Gabe Green said while sitting on an unmade bed, game controller in hand.

Green, a bio-chemistry student at WMU, estimates that he spends upwards of ten hours a week playing video games. At least half of those hours are spent playing games that involve guns and are violent in nature.

Despite having fired guns countless times in video games, Green has never shot a gun in real life.

“I grew up with people around me having guns and having shot guns, but I was not personally allowed to,” Green said.

While he has always been an avid gamer, Green learned about guns from his family not video games, he said. Green both supports the rights of people to own guns and the need for guns to be depicted in video games, but no one should take video game depictions of guns and violence seriously, he said.

“A video game is not real life, these depictions of guns in video games aren’t accurate in the slightest,” Green said. “There are some people who may think this is real life, but it’s not.”

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This website features the reporting, writing and multimedia work of undergraduate students at various levels of the WMU journalism curriculum. The student work published here is intended to both showcase the work that students in the program are doing as well as serve as another source of information about the Kalamazoo community and current issues.
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